Gross Exercise Calories vs Net Exercise Calories

gibsons

I had never given this concept much thought until I was reading the run/walk article (posted yesterday) - and it has me wondering. I believe that most exercise calculators (including those on MFP) calculate the gross calories burned and tack that on to our allowed daily intake; shouldn't we actually tack on the net calories burned? I'm not certain of an easy way to accomplish this (without a lot of fancy math equations), but I lean toward not eating all my exercise calories as one way to accomplish the same goal. Thoughts or ideas from others?

jfinnivan

When I use my HRM, I take the number of calories it tells me, and subtract 80 calories for every hour of exercise time. This is the number of calories I burn for normal activity, according to MFP.

FaithandFitness

Excellent point! I had never really thought much about it, thanks for mentioning it.

jagoochie

oooo never thought about that?!!!

lulabellewoowoo

When I use my HRM, I take the number of calories it tells me, and subtract 80 calories for every hour of exercise time. This is the number of calories I burn for normal activity, according to MFP.

Same, but I actually do 100 calories as it makes it easier for my poor brain to calculate 15 minute intervals

persian_star

I read the same article a while back (I'm a walker, so I was interested to see the difference to being a runner) and despite seeing the sense of it, have failed to put it into practice with my numbers at all!

2 weeks ago I finally got a HRM (Polar FT40) which I love, but it's left me even more confused! Not only do my numbers now fluctuate between 160 cals and 230 cals for my 32 min, 2 mile walk (to and from work), but it suddenly dawned on me the other day that I had no idea if the HRM was counting my net calories, i.e. taking into account all my stats and working the BMR cals for that time in, or whether it was gross, and I should be removing my bmr cals myself!

My BMR is 1350, so that's just shy of 1 cal per minute. If I burned, say 180 cals on my walk, would I then need to subtract 30 for my BMR?

I don't remember seeing ANYWHERE whether HRM's give net or gross cals, so if anyone can illuminate, that would be really helpful.

PS - I just posted this on a similar thread, but knowing my luck no one will read it, so hopefully the double posting will be forgiven!

Tari_D

Hmm that is a good point. A bit depressing as I often knock of some calories burnt from excersizes incase there are inaccuracies so knocking off more leaves me with even more work to do!

What about machines at the gym then? How would you know which was being calculated?

jojo4cats

I posted a similar question to the Polar forum and they can never give me a straight answer of it's the net calories or gross calories that we are getting off the reading. Here is the answer I got:
"hi,
As said, your basic metabolic rate (what your body uses even if you were just sitting on a sofa) and the calories you consume being active are included in the calculation. Your basic metabolic rate does not all of a sudden stop when you're active, which is why what is calculated is what your body has used in the time you were measuring it.

Being active also increases your basic metabolic rate for a while after training.

//kate"

Sounds like Polar training computer gives us the gross calories, not the net calories.